


Uncalculated Perceptions

by Saeva



Category: Cube - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:40:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22211176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saeva/pseuds/Saeva
Summary: David Worth is having the worst day ever.Originally written for Yuletide, for Brighid, in 2006 or so.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9
Collections: Yuletide 2007





	Uncalculated Perceptions

The fact was that they were never getting out of here, not today, not tomorrow, not the next day; if they could even survive that long without water. He wouldn’t be surprised if, in one of these endless, square rooms, there was an available water source to keep them going. Going until they killed each other, went insane, or both. Or the rooms killed them, like they had Ren.

Those were the only options.

See, he knew that they weren’t getting out of there because, well, because he’d spent a lot of time in the science lab of his high school when he’d been a disaffected teenager with too much time on his hands and his hands on his dick a lot. When he wasn’t jacking off he’d watch the lab rats in the science lab, just watch them. He’d even done an experiment involving lab rats for his 10th grade science fair project.

And here was what he knew about rats: they never got out.

No matter how many times they found the cheese or avoided the shocks, figuring out which way to turn in the maze to reach the end, they never got *out.* They just got… cheese. Maybe to rats cheese was like the hope of freedom for humans. The point was…

He’d had a point, hadn’t he?

Right! The point was that while sometimes they got the cheese and sometimes they got the shit shocked out of them, at the end of the day they were still stuck running the same damn maze over and over until their little legs and twitchy little noses gave out and they died. And when they didn’t? They were just put into a cage and left there, running a wheel and… who knew what rats thought about.

And they, themselves, here, now, himself and Leaven and Quentin and Holloway; they were the rats. This was the maze. And they were searching for the cage.

How pointless was that?

“What?”

He looked up, searching out who’d said something to him, and repeated the word, “What?” It was Leaven, standing near him and looking down. She was leaning against the wall, her thin, white thighs eye-level to him. Maybe some other time that would have been interesting. Or maybe not. He preferred blondes. Maybe it was interesting right now. He didn’t have the energy to be interested.

“You said something.”

Oh. He must have said that last bit out loud. Still, he shook his head and leaned it back against the glowing blue wall. The whole place glowed until you couldn’t even get dark by closing your eyes.

“Yes, you did,” she accused him. Oh, how they’d all accuse him if they knew what part he played in this.

The outer shell. Did that make him Judas? Could you be a betrayer when you didn’t even know what was fucking going on?

“I said this is pointless.”

She scowled at him, youthful anger and rage directed at the truth of the statement. Already her mind was getting fuzzy, things were stretching out like two all-nighters in a row until the words on the page, on the cage he laughed to himself, blurred together. Until it was impossible to think anymore, to work through the numbers and angles and variables any longer.

What Leaven didn’t know, maybe, yet, was that they were already dead. They were just bones rattling at cages. Specters left to haunt themselves.

Skeletons, base parts, support bars, atoms. The basic elements of who they were was all that was left. He hadn’t been this much of a cynic when he woke up this morning. But then, when he woke up this morning, the proverbial cheese hadn’t been rotten with mold.

Plus, he’d had alcohol readily available.

“I need a drink.” He pushed himself up, the bright lights swaying a little as he did. Except they weren’t. It was he that was swaying.

“We don’t have any water,” Leaven told him, as if that wasn’t self-evident. Limited water available; that would have made this game ever so much more fun, wouldn’t it have?

“That wasn’t the sort of drink I meant.” Licking his cracked, dry lips he stretched and felt the sound of his back popping. Too many nights falling asleep on the sofa in front of porn. He’d always meant to replace that sofa with its lumpy cushions.

But it didn’t really matter now, did it? None of it mattered. None of it had ever mattered.

Rats in cages, with cheese and mazes. He laughed to himself again and shook his head, watching the wall swim in front of him with an almost detached curiosity. Holloway could probably explain what was happening to their bodies and minds in excruciatingly boring detail.

“Wake up!” Leaven snapped at him, panic in her voice.

Panic over him? Panic over losing another one of them? What did it matter; they were all dead anyway.

“I’m here. For what it’s… Worth.” A pun. How funny.

Worth. Worthless. That was him.

“We have to keep moving.” Leaven’s voice. Leaven’s hand on his arm. Leaven’s soft skin against his rough palm. “Don’t give up. We’ll get out of here.”

They wouldn’t. Oh, no, they wouldn’t. And if they did, it’d only mean going back to the cage. But the way she was looking at him, softly, he didn’t want to say it. No words. That was where he got in trouble. A sharp tongue and not enough filter in between that and his brain. Instead he squeezed her hand and thought about what squeezing other parts of her might be like before she tugged away.

He’d follow. One rat after another. Until they all fell down.


End file.
